My Burden: The Memoir of Antonia Shimdera
by The Bonnie Pirate Lass
Summary: THE VERY FIRST MY ANTONIA FIC! YAY! Antonia is dead, after years and years of friendship with Jim. All he has now is her diary. What does he find?


HELLO! WOW! This is the very first My Antonia Fic!!!! IM SO HAPPIES!!!!! I hope someone reads this... lol. w00t. OKIES READ AND ENJOY! REVIEW!!! PREFERABLY!!!

The winter wind blew cold around the surprisingly small group of people the day they buried Antonia Shimerda.

The priest, pulling his coat closer around him, yelling his prayer over the howling wind of the oncoming blizzard. Antonia's children were all too shocked to say anything, their mother? Dead?

Tony Shimerda?

Dead...?

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Ambrosch's moccasined feet pounded into the cold ground as he ran from the house out to the barn. Jim was back again, much to everyone's surprise, and the children were all as happy as clams to see him. 

At least, they had been. Until today.

He didn't bother to wipe away the pouring tears that flew freely from his cheeks into the air, letting gravity take them over as they hit the ground with an inaudible "splash". "JIM!" He screamed. "JIM! COME QUICK, PLEASE! IT'S MOTHER!"

Jim, who had been napping, his hat pulled down over his sleepy eyes, jumped up as soon as his ears caught a bit of the fear in the young boys voice. They met at the barn door, Ambrosch flying in as Jim's hand closed around the handle, pulling it open. "Oh, JIM!" he sobbed, throwing his arms around the man's waist. "Please, Mother's collapsed, come quickly..." His little voice cracked as he spoke, pulling Jim's hand, trying to run as quickly as he could with the tears blurring his vision. "Ambrosch, what in the devil's going on?!" Jim exclaimed, doing his best to keep up with the young boys speedy pace.

As they burst inside the tiny house, their eyes fell upon the girls, all of them kneeling before their mother, trying to help her up with no avail. "Back up, girls... get back, give me some room!" He said a bit more forcefully than he realized, and as soon as the girls were out of his way, he scooped his beloved Tony into his arms and carried her into her room.

"Oh, Jim... it hurts..." she murmured to him, tossing her head about in his arms as she clutched her chest in pain. "Shhh, Tony, don't talk, just hold on..." Laying her down gently, he yelled back to the children - all hovering in her bedroom doorway, "Someone fetch the doctor!" Wide eyed and fearful, the oldest girl nodded quickly, and ran out the back door to mount a horse and be on her way. She was so much like Antonia in her younger days, wild and carefree, and Jim prayed that her days of being her mother's right hand were not over. 

Brushing a strand of hair from Antonia's damp forehead, Jim looked over her, the sheer terror showing in his eyes. He was half glad Tony couldn't see him like this; she had always thought of him as the bravest person she'd ever known. 'Ever since that snake...' he thought to himself, as his body mechanically went about doing what he needed to do to calm her down.

Throwing her head back, she let out a choked cry, clawing at her shirt. She could have screamed, but she felt as though she were being... crushed. Crushed like a grape under the foot of an elephant. Panting, she cried out to Leo: "The book! Give me the book!" He nodded quickly to her, not bothering to wipe away his tears as he rifled through her beside drawer and pulled out... a diary, from the looks of it. He pressed it into her hands, and she in turn pressed it into Jims. "Read this... read this..." she whispered as her head hit the pillow once more, and it did not rise again.

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After the funeral, Jim returned to the house, where the few neighbors that did show up were offering their condolances to Cuzak. He hadn't seen as miserable a person since his grandmother died and left his grandfather to mourn his losses. He wasn't far behind her, died two weeks later. Most people in Black Hawk said it was heartbreak that killed him.

Cuzak looked as though heartbreak could kill him.

35 years to the day, Antonia was more like her father than she knew, everyone had said so, but to share the same death day, it was irony wrapped around a little more irony. Possible too ironic to be just a coincidence. Antonia would have shrugged her shoulders, smiled brightly and exclaimed something about how "things would happen as they were supposed to." Maybe she'd have hugged her children close to her, kissing their foreheads, maybe she would have shooed them outside. 

Whatever the case, it didn't change the fact that Antonia Shimerda was now buried in the cold, hard ground, on an unforgiving Nebraska farm plot.

Silently, his eyes full of tears, Jim took the book she had left him and crept into the fruit cave, taking a seat between the shelves of spiced plums, the plums Antonia had loved so much. He cracked the book open, a bit of dust taking flight as the pages separated, and he blew a quick breath of wind across them, clearing away the tiny particles. Reaching into the breast-pocket of his shirt, he pulled out his glasses, and once he had placed them on his nose, he began to read, from the beginning.

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_Mrs. Burden tell me I should write in this book, that it make my english better. I hope she right, I very much like to talk to everyone, and it nice to have good friends like the Burdens. Especially the boy Jim. He so nice to me. Very lucky to meet such good people in this new place._

A smile spread across Jim's face, which faded as he flipped through the pages... there were no more entries. Wait - there was. One, in the back. 'Glory, it's long...', he thought, whistling as he flipped through the writings.

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Oh, my Lord. I thought I'd lost this old book when I was a child. Seems like only yesterday we came here from Bohemia, that I was a child with Jim, running across the feilds with he and Yulka. Then when he moved away to Black Hawk, and when Jake and Ambrosch fought, and all those time's we'd lost touch... I missed him so much. Jim had always been my dearest friend. The only person to ever really see me as who I was, rather than a working girl, or a foreigner, he saw me as Antonia Shimerda. When Papa died, Jim tried to make me feel better, and it didn't work, I didn't want it to, but goodness, the boy tried.

I suppose I've always loved Jim Burden, and now, as I write this, my newborn baby asleep beside me, my husband as well, I can't help but wonder if things could have been different between us, ever. We've always been close like family, but truth be told, have either of us wanted it that way? Our whole lives long? No, not at all, but a part of me is thankful he hasn't been around... not sure I could face him after all these years, and not throw my arms around him, and hug him tightly.

I hope to see him soon. I don't believe I'll be able to go on much longer without seeing my dear, sweet Jim... his name suits him.... he's my deepest secret, the darkest corner of my heart, locked away inside of me.

My burden.

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Frozen, Jim sat in the cellar, staring into space. She had loved him... she had loved him all along, and she had never shown it, she had never said anything.

Pushing his way through the piling snow drifts, he made his way to the fresh grave where his oldest friend had been buriend not an hour ago. He knelt down, one knee pressing into the snow, not minding the cold, as the first tears of sorrow and realization he would never see her shining smile again began to stream down his cheeks.

"I love you, Antonia Shimerda..." he whispered, the wind carrying away his words.


End file.
